1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data storage and backup solutions for archiving data. More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to hardware, software, systems, and methods for efficiently restoring data by storing location hints with data recipes committed to a hash file system.
2. The Relevant Technology
The need for reliable backup and archiving of information is well known. Businesses are devoting large amounts of time and money toward information system (IS) resources that are devoted to providing backup and archive of information resident in computers and servers within their organizations that produce and rely upon digital information. The customers of the data storage industry are more frequently demanding that not only is their data properly backed up but also that such data protection be done in a cost effective manner with a reduced cost per bit for stored data sets.
To address these demands, Content Addressed Storage (CAS) has been developed to provide a more cost effective approach to data backup and archiving. Generally, CAS applications involve a storage technique for content that is in its final form, i.e., fixed content, or that is not changed frequently. CAS assigns an identifier to the data so that it can be accessed no matter where it is located. For example, a hash value may be assigned to each portion or subset of a data set that is to be data protected or backed up. Presently, CAS applications are provided in distributed or networked storage systems designed for CAS, and storage applications use CAS programming interface (API) or the like to store and locate CAS-based files in the distributed system or network.
The usage of CAS enables data protection systems to store, online, multi-year archives of backup data by removing storage of redundant data because complete copies of data sets do not have to be stored as long as that content is stored and available. The use of CAS removes the challenges of maintaining a centralized backup index and also provides a high level of data integrity. CAS-based backup and archive applications have also improved the usage network and data storage resources with better distribution of data throughout a multi-node data storage system.
CAS-based backup and archive applications are also desirable because multi-year or other large backup archives can be stored easily since only a single instance of any particular data object (i.e., content) is stored regardless of how many times the object or content is discovered with the data set being protected or backed up. With CAS, the storage address for any data element or content is generated by an analysis of the contents of the data set itself. Since an exclusive storage address is generated for each unique data element (which is matched with a unique identifier) and the storage address points to the location for the data element, CAS-based architectures have found favor in the storage industry because they reduce the volume of data stored as each unique data object is stored only once within the data storage system.
In a conventional CAS-based architecture, the unique identifiers assigned to unique data elements are used to steer the unique data elements to index stripes where a specific storage address (e.g., identifying a data node and/or offset/object ID) for each unique data element is recorded along with a corresponding unique identifier. When restoration is desired, a seek is performed in the corresponding index stripe for the unique identifier to determine the storage address of the corresponding unique data element. Once the storage address has been identified, a second seek is performed in the corresponding data node to retrieve the data stored at the identified storage address. It would be advantageous to eliminate one or more of such seek operations to increase the speed of and decrease the time required for restoring data.
The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one exemplary technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced